Field Trips gone virtual

Sure, we've all heard the promises that virtual field trips proposed; they allow schools without the budget for real Field trips to learn and participate, no more long bus rides and exotic places are easily within reach with the click of the mouse. The reality is not so glamorous. Many of these "field trips" become boring lectures with a cheesy slide show. They only teach the students who can focus long enough to pay attention to the screen, which isn't long. But some web-based field trips are making great strides in interacting with students in the virtual world. Blue Zones quest is a site where students vote to determine where a group of real scientists will go next to examine why people in some parts of the world live so much longer than others. GoNorth! takes students through the world of the Northern territories of Alaska, Scandinavia and Russia wilderness refuges. They follow real explorers and Dog mushers and can even follow the story from one of the sled dog's point of view which she writes about on her very own blog. The article also introduces another field trip site that explores Dinosaurs, one that explores Yellowstone and other National Parks and one that explores the Lewis and Clark trail. All the sites are interactive and have different options to make them easy to use on all classrooms, K-12. Although they didn't introduce any of them in this article, the virtual world can also allow students to learn about different cultures and even to create global classroom pen pals by linking classrooms from different countries. There is a great deal of learning opportunities when you can use the computer to connect the whole classroom to the world.